Learning English pronunciation

Learn to pronounce English words as soon as possible:
English pronunciation is unpredictable. If you don’t put effort into English pronunciation, you will make
mistakes, and mistakes can turn into bad habits.
The longer you ignore pronunciation, the more bad habits you will form. So don’t put it off.

How to learn English pronunciation

English uses different sounds than your native language.
If you want to speak English well, you have to teach yourself to recognize them
and pronounce them.

Study the sounds of English
and their IPA symbols. Learn to recognize all the sounds.
Recognition is important because it lets you learn pronunciation from spoken English.
In order to learn the correct pronunciation of a word, you need to know
what sounds you hear — for example, whether you just heard
/dɒk/ or /dʌk/.
You have to be able to tell the difference.

English pronunciation is unpredictable, so guessing the pronunciation of a word
rarely works and can lead to bad habits.

That’s why you have to be a bit obsessive about checking the pronunciation of words, especially in the beginning.
You should think of every word as a potential trap — not just the “difficult” words
like determine or process. Basic English words
like of, won’t, does or most can have very surprising pronunci­ations.

When you’re speaking and you’re not 100% sure how to pronounce something, don’t guess
— if possible, check the correct pronunciation before you say it. If not, then at least check it soon afterwards.

While you’re reading in English, keep asking yourself: “Do I know how this word is pronounced?
Can I transcribe it with phonetic symbols?”. If you’re not sure, look it up in a dictionary.
This should happen very frequently when you’re a pronunciation beginner.

Listen and notice. Get some spoken input:
TV, podcasts, movies, audiobooks, recordings in dictionaries, etc.
When listening, pay attention to how sounds and words are pronounced. Think about
what sounds you hear. When you listen to non-native speakers, notice their mistakes.

Practice pronouncing English words and phrases from time to time.
Practice can take many forms. You can practice in a systematic way
(e.g. a 15-minute session with a dictionary or online pronunciation exercises), or you can
just repeat a couple words while you’re doing something else (e.g. watching a movie or taking a shower).
The important thing is to do it regularly — that way, you will make steady progress.

Consider learning the pronunciations of the most common English words in a systematic way.
You could get a list of most frequent words and look up their pronunciations.
Or you could use my English pronunciation software
that teaches you the pronunciations of the most frequently used English words and makes you
remember them.

We created the ASCII Phonetic Alphabet
because the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet are difficult to type
on computers. The ASCII Phonetic Alphabet uses only symbols which you can
find on your computer’s keyboard.